This invention relates to a balloon flotation electrode catheter for cardiac (EOG) monitoring and temporary transvenous pacing.
Prompt recognition and early treatment of potentially dangerous arrhythmias have significantly reduced the in-hospital mortality of patients with acute myocardial infarction and improved the management of post-surgical patients. Reliable identification and continuous accurate monitoring of cardiac rhythm in such patients is of utmost importance.
Electrocardiograms for such purposes have heretofore been recorded through the use of various types of skin electrodes. These systems suffer from several disadvantages, such as signal distortion due to patient movement, high noise to signal ratio and baseline drift. Further, because of the relatively similar amplitude and morphology of atrial and ventricular signals, the use of such systems for automated on-line arrhythmia recognition and monitoring is virtually impossible. Diagnosis and differentiation of complex arrythmias with the use of such surface electrograms is frequently difficult even for a skilled electrocardiographer because of uncertainty in the identification of the P wave.
Objects of the invention are, therefore, to provide improved equipment which will overcome the disadvantages described above, to provide improved means for direct recording of intra-atrial electrocardiograms to facilitate the diagnosis of complex cardiac arrhythmias, to provide an improved instrument for use in recording intraventricular electrograms receiving ventricualr signals of a very large magnitude, to provide means for the simultaneous recording of intraatrial and intraventricular signals, to provide means for the safe, continuous and reliable hemodynamic monitoring of cardiac function in patients with acute myocardial infarction, or following major surgery, especially where such patients present serious hemodynamic problems, and to provide a flow-directed balloon flotation electrode catheter for the purposes described, including thermodilution cardiac output determinations.